Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0A8Z3GDWGCQCE44374VYZ

The air in the abandoned Tube station was thick with the smell of damp concrete and something else, something metallic and cloying. Detective Harlow Quinn descended the final flight of stairs, her worn leather watch catching the single swinging beam of a work light. The sound of her boots on the gritty floor echoed in the cavernous space. A uniformed officer stood by a taped-off section of the platform, his face pale. “Evening, Detective.” Quinn nodded, her gaze sweeping the scene. The curved walls of the old tunnel were stained with decades of grime and efflorescence. In the centre of the taped-off area lay the body. A man, late thirties, dressed in clothes too expensive for a stroll through a derelict station. Her colleague, Detective Sergeant Finch, straightened up from his crouch beside the corpse. He offered a tight smile, his eyes tired. “Harlow. Glad you could make it. Interesting one.” “Interesting how, Finch?” “Looks like a deal gone wrong. Classic. Our vic, Julian Thorne, had a reputation for… unconventional procurement. Wallet’s gone, watch is missing. Probably interrupted a robbery.” Quinn didn’t reply. She stepped past the tape, her movements carrying a military precision that made the uniformed officer stand a little straighter. She circled the body slowly, letting the scene speak to her. Thorne’s eyes were wide, fixed on the grimy ceiling. No visible wounds on his face. His hands were clean, unblemished. No defensive injuries. She knelt, her sharp jaw a tense line in the shadows. The smell was stronger here. Not just blood. It was like ozone after a lightning strike, sharp and unnatural. “COD looks like a single stab wound to the abdomen,” Finch said, gesturing with his pen. “Deep. Perp knew what they were doing. Bled out fast. Minimal struggle.” Quinn’s focus wasn’t on the wound. It was on the floor around the body. She leaned closer, her breath fogging in the chill air. The concrete was stained a dark, spreading crimson, but the pattern was wrong. It wasn’t a pool. It was a circle. A near-perfect ring of blood that enclosed the victim, with only a single, clean break on the western side. “Finch. The blood.” He peered down. “What about it? He bled out. Gravity does the rest.” “Gravity doesn’t arrange itself into a goddamn ritual circle.” Finch sighed, a sound of long-suffering patience. “Harlow, not everything is a conspiracy. He could have been lying on something, a piece of debris that got moved. Or the blood just… flowed that way.” “There’s nothing to flow around. The floor is flat.” She stood, her eyes scanning the darkness beyond the work lights. “And where’s the weapon?” “We’re searching. Perp probably took it with him. Smart.” “Too smart,” Quinn murmured. She walked the perimeter of the taped area, her gaze drifting from the floor to the walls, to the tracks themselves. Something glittered near the rusted rail. She retrieved a pair of nitrile gloves from her coat pocket and knelt again. It was a small brass compass, no bigger than her palm. A fine patina of verdigris bloomed across its casing. The face was etched with sigils she didn’t recognise, intricate and foreign. The needle wasn't pointing north. It spun lazily, then stopped, quivering, aimed directly at the body. “What have you got there?” Finch asked, walking over. “Found this by the rail.” He squinted. “Some old trinket. Probably belonged to the vic. Dropped it in the struggle.” Quinn turned it over in her gloved hand. The sigils felt sharp against her fingertips. “Thorne was a high-end art dealer, Finch. He dealt in Picassos, not… this. This looks like it came from a pawn shop in a fantasy novel.” “Maybe he had a hidden hobby. Look, the forensics team is on their way. Let’s not get sidetracked by weird compasses and blood patterns. The evidence points to a straightforward robbery-homicide. We find the weapon, we canvass for witnesses, we get a lead.” “The only witness is a rat, and the evidence is screaming that we’re missing the point.” Quinn’s gaze fell back to the break in the blood circle. A single point of egress. An opening. “A robbery doesn’t require this much theatre. You take the wallet, you run. You don’t stop to… arrange the scenery.” She walked toward the break, her boots crunching on loose gravel. The air felt different here. Colder. The hairs on her arms stood up. She crouched again, tracing the invisible line of the circle with her eyes. The break was precise. Deliberate. Her mind flashed back three years. DS Morris, her partner, standing in a warehouse just like this one. The same wrongness in the air. The same sense of a reality that had been bent just enough to break. An official report cited a gas explosion. Unexplained circumstances. Quinn knew better. She’d seen something in the flickering darkness before the blast, something that defied every law of physics she held dear. “Harlow?” Finch’s voice pulled her back. She stood, slipping the compass into an evidence bag. “This wasn’t about his wallet, Finch.” “So what was it about? Some kind of cult thing? In Camden? Unlikely.” “Something was traded here. And Thorne was the price.” She looked back at the body, then at the compass in the bag. The needle inside was still pointing at the corpse, a silent, metallic finger pointing at an accusation no one else could see. “He wasn’t killed for what he had on him. He was killed for what he was. A gateway.” Finch shook his head, his expression a mixture of pity and frustration. “You see patterns where there are none, Harlow. Ever since Morris…” “Don’t,” Quinn’s voice was low and sharp. “Don’t say his name.” She turned away from him, her attention fixed on the dark mouth of the tunnel ahead. The work light only reached so far. Beyond its glow was pure, solid black. She knew, with a certainty that settled like ice in her gut, that whatever had happened here wasn't over. The circle was broken. Something had been let out. Or something had been let in. And the little brass compass in her hand was the only clue she had to find it.